Customer Reviews

Story Of Dvorák In Words And Music

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I ordered this CD because of the price, and quickly found out why it is a cheap one. The narration is fine, but it is spoken over the music, and the music is just excerpts except for the featured selections at the end of the CD, which is all of four pieces. This is a great CD for the car - a little audio learning lesson, and does give a good intro into some of Dvoraks most famous pieces. But, it is no Carl Haas rendition.

I noticed in reading various reviews for this series that many people are using these when they home school their children to introduce them to classical music. I think that's great-and something probably no longer done in your basic school system, sadly.
However, i'm over 50 and have been purchasing this series entirely for my own knowledge and enjoyment, and I have to say that i'm enjoying these so much that I intend on getting the entire series (which is 18 CD's and covers 20 c0mposers in total).
I noticed some folks complained that the series doesn't contain complete pieces-to them I say that there are TONS of music-only CD's (even budget collections) by all 20 of the composers covered-and for most of them no other biographical CD's. So I really don't understand the complaint, unless those purchasers didn't bother to read the full description of the CD before buying.
Personally I wish their were more CD's like this for jazz musicians and more modern composers. This stuff is simply great when driving-especially on a long trip.
About my only (slight) complaint is that many of these CD's run at just over 60 minutes. I would rather the people creating and releasing these attempt to use the full 80-minute capacity of modern CD's and give more specific, detailed biographical information on the artists-more music, as I said before, could be found elsewhere. But at times entire (important) chunks of the composers life is overlooked for the sake of time considerations and brevity. But that's my ONLY complaint and it won't at all stop me from buying the complete set. Certainly worth it's very reasonable price..